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While many are focusing on the small drop in NICS background checks over the last couple of months, the number of concealed handgun permits have continued to go up. Here is part of a story that appeared on Tampa Bay’s CBS TV (WTSP) on April 10, 2017.

Florida’s concealed carry permits

1,581,742 on June 30, 2016

1,681,482 as of November 30, 2016

1,718,672 on December 31, 2016

1,747,635 on March 31, 2017

So that is a 54,479 or 4% increase in permits in Florida from November 30, 2016 to March 31, 2017.…

In 2010, Iowa’s numbers were just shy of 40,000, but according to data from the Iowa Department of Public Safety, last year the number crested 220,000. In 2011 alone, the number of permits issued in the state more than doubled.

Nationally, a report by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that between 2007 and 2014 found there was a 127-percent increase in gun permit holders in America.

Portland’s GoLocalPDX has a lead news story on the growth of concealed carry permits in the Portland area. Not enough information is presented in the article to determine the permit growth rate for all three counties, but Multnomah and Washington counties had a 41 percent growth in permits between 2011 and 2014 (42840/30429). …

Given the small percentage of Illinoisans who have obtained a concealed handgun permit, it is very doubtful that permitted concealed could have a significant impact on crime rates, though it might put criminals on notice and there were a few startling cases of self defense with permits in Illinois. In one case in Chicago, a former soldier with a legal permit to carry stopped a gang from killing four people who had just left a party. …

On August 1, 2013, Alabama moved from a discretionary concealed handgun permit rule to one where sheriffs had no discretion (copy of law is here). The number of permits in these six counties have increased by only 4 percent, much less than the increase that we are seeing in most of the US.…